Product design student's resource

1. What made you pursue a career in product design?
I started designing and making bits of furniture and lights at school, and it went from there.

2. Where, and what, did you study?
I studied at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. I started on the furniture design course, but mid-way through the course, steered more towards product design.

3. What did you enjoy about this course?
I think the briefs were always well thought through, and the course leaders usually tried to set up 'live' clients, so that each project could be as realistic as possible. It was a well-balanced mix of free creativity within tight constraints and timelines.

4. What are the most important things you have learned since starting work, which you did not learn at college?
My few years working as a modelmaker, after leaving college, gave me the opportunity to expand the mechanical side of my brain, and gave me a great feel for different materials and their properties.

5. With hindsight, are you glad you did this course?
It was a great course at the time, with very high staffing levels, and excellent facilities. However I may have been better off on a slightly more engineering-biased course.

6. Did you manage to gain any work experience before you left college? How did you get it, and what did it teach you?
Not as such, although I did work for some architects doing odd bits of design, drafting, and modelmaking.

7. What was your first job when you left college? Did you find it hard to get into design?
When I left college, it was the height of a recession. Design jobs were very few and far between, with design consultancies shrinking in size rather than taking new people on. I decided to make a list of the things I most enjoyed doing, and if I could find something that fitted as many of those as possible, I'd be happy for a while. Modelmaking fitted the bill, and I ended up doing that for about four years. My first design job fell into my lap, to some extent. It was a job where I was the only product designer. It meant a very steep learning curve and a lot of hard graft, but it gave me an enormous amount of experience in a relatively short period of time.

8. Other than specific skills, what do you think makes a good designer?
The ability to think laterally; and to be able to put yourself in the shoes (and mind) of the end user.

9. What do you enjoy most about working in product design?
Solving problems.

10. Are there aspects of the work you don’t enjoy?
a) I don't always think of designing/redesigning lots of plastic products as particularly ethical.
b) The relatively small amount of a client's budget that they are willing to spend on the design of the product itself can be a little frustrating at times.

11. If you could go back in time, would you still follow a career in product design?
There's probably little of my career path I would change, to date.

12. Which product design skills do you find you use most?
Solving mechanical and ergonomic issues (and CAD).

13. Which part of the design process do you enjoy most?
Probably those from question 5, particularly mechanical problem solving and innovation.

14. What piece of work are you most proud of?
Some mechanically innovative office chair controls, and a wheelchair.

15. Finally... If you could give just one piece of advice to a student of product design, what would it be?
Ask lots of questions.